On Tue, 31 Aug 2004, Teo Zenios wrote:
> > And: there's decent money to be made in these jobs, too.
>
> There is always decent money to be made in servicing equipment (or software)
> that the vast majority of people don't understand because the equipment is
> obsolete. The problem is that its a short term money maker and not a long
> term career since that equipment will get junked sooner or later for
> something new. If you can get experience with different platforms at the end
> of their lifespan I guess you could keep on making some decent consulting
> money.
This goes for any work in a niche market. The good news is, that once
you "get in" on a retro-based support job, and do it well, chances are
above average they will also grant you more of the regular support
work available, assuming "if he can do the VAX this well, he probably
will do a decent job on our other stuff too". And, quite often, this
is not a bad assumption.
The difference between a consultant with a retro background and one
without is, that the retro person usually has actual hands-on experience
with many aspects of what lies at the base of modern IT issues. Most
newly-grown consultants have their base knowledge from books and/or
hear-say from collegues and teachers, but that's it. They have never
seen an Ethernet bridge, so would not know how to spot collision-domain
problems, for example. The retro-guy *spots* the problems, based on
experience and recognition of symptoms, where the new-guy has to perform
several rounds of analysis to figure it out. Or not.
In my personal experience, I have gotten "in to" companies based on
reputation (muhahaha !) and to help out with a retro system issue, and
then gradually more and more of their total IT "business". Since I am
far from cheap, and customers still attack me with requests, I must
therefore assume they are pleased with my work, since they kicked out
others (from the new-guy arena) in favor of moi...
Cheers,
Fred
--
Fred N. van Kempen, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) Collector/Archivist
Visit the VAXlab Project at http://VAXlab.pdp11.nl/
Visit the Archives at http://www.pdp11.nl/
Email: waltje_at_pdp11.nl BUSSUM, THE NETHERLANDS / Mountain View, CA, USA
Received on Tue Aug 31 2004 - 09:56:15 BST